For my latest quilt I envisioned an interesting green background with vibrantly colored circles in the foreground. I got to work on the background with my usual technique of auditioning fabrics and designing as I went along. I chose green, because I had A LOT of green fabric. Plus, I had a theme idea that…
Here’s another report on my awesome Design Your Own Nature Quilt students, at Empty Spools. Lucy was a delight. Like Katie, her only quilting experience was with simple piecing. The design concepts and construction techniques were completely new to her and she was very willing to learn them. Her inspiration photo was one she had taken herself….
My week teaching Design Your Own Nature Quilt at Empty Spools Seminar was excellent and my students were fantastic! They brought their creative courage and tried lots of new things – with amazing results. This was Alex’s board for the classroom walk-through. She did the little plant on the left first. She played down the…
I’m just back from teaching Design Your Own Nature Quilt at Empty Spools Seminar, in Pacific Grove, CA. It was fabulous!!! The beach side setting was lovely, complete with historical architecture, wind-swept trees, and the sound of the surf. But, of course, the real excitement was occurring in the classrooms. I had nine fantastic students who…
Here’s my latest quilt, Happy Family I’m REALLY happy with it and I hope you like it, too. As you can see, I added three loose circles, to add interest. Since there are three members of my immediate family, and because the colors are so upbeat, I decided to name it Happy Family. I got carried away…
I continued working on my latest quilt, using lots of trial and error. This is where I left off in the last blog post. I decided against the strong stripes in the lower left. This closer shot shows how I first, fold the fabrics to audition placement and size. I cut into them when I…
If you’re familiar with my design process you know that I often end up with a challenging “Tetris”-type assembly at the construction stage. To get around this, I decided I’d work in a grid this time. My plan was to cut my selected fabrics into squares of the same size and then to move them…
After making each art piece I like to study it to see if I can figure out what works and/or what does not. I was particularly happy with this recent quilt, Exuberance, so I studied it a bit. My question: “what makes it successful?” I think it has a strong composition, good use of colors,…
I dyed this fabric last year and it’s one of my favorites. I was really happy with the way I had a viable design without doing anything more to it, but HOW do you design with that? I had a false start last year and am now trying again. These are the collection of “featured”…
After finishing up the left 2/3 of my red and yellow “bean” quilt, it was time to tackle the right yellow portion. It came together pretty well. (Still in -progress below.) During these final stages I also considered added some skinny lines, for energy. (See them pinned on at the top in the photo above?)…